Laptop for work and some gaming, $1000-1100

Total budget (in local currency) and country of purchase. Please do not use USD unless purchasing in the US:

$1000-1100 USD

Are you open to refurbs/used?

No.

How would you prioritize form factor (ultrabook, 2-in-1, etc.), build quality, performance, and battery life?

Build quality and performance are important for me, I can do with a battery duration of 2-5hrs. My current laptop lasts about 3 hours. No 2-in-1.

How important is weight and thinness to you?

Weight is important, thinness not so much.

Do you have a preferred screen size? If indifferent, put N/A.

N/A

Are you doing any CAD/video editing/photo editing/gaming? List which programs/games you desire to run.

I do some photo editing, light programming and gaming. Programs I'd like to use: QGIS, RStudio, darktable.

If you're gaming, do you have certain games you want to play? At what settings and FPS do you want?

Minecraft, Hollow Knight, AOE II DE. I don't mind having the lowest settings, I've played Skyrim and the Witcher 3 on the lowest settings on a shitty laptop (HP 15-da0011la: 8GB RAM, Intel Core i5 8th Gen, NVIDIA GeForce MX110, 225GB SSD and 1TB HDD).

Any specific requirements such as good keyboard, reliable build quality, touch-screen, finger-print reader, optical drive or good input devices (keyboard/touchpad)?

Don't need a touchscreen. In terms of ports: Headphone/mic jack, at least two USB A, HDMI. An SD card port is preferable but can do without.

Leave any finishing thoughts here that you may feel are necessary and beneficial to the discussion.

My current laptop has a network card that includes both bluetooth and wifi in the same chip, so it prevents me from using wireless devices and navigate online at the same time, so I'd rather that was not the case. I basically have to plug the ethernet cable to be able to have Zoom calls with my bluetooth headset on. I would also prefer if the RAM cards were not soldered, but I understand that with my budget it may be the most common.